Time for a poll. (The subject is abuse)

[lch]

vfb said:
slave collars are never picked up in a battle. It's been tested.

Awww. And they're always so eager to ram a second Eye of Aiming in their head when they find one.

[VedalkenBear]

I find it interesting that people are against BF + Retreat. Perhaps it is the overall efficacy of the BF enchantments, but it is the only option for those who wish to fight 'elastically'; i.e., by giving ground and exhausting the enemy army.

I have never run into this myself, so I am not exactly sure what happens. From what people say in this thread, it sounds like the battle continues indefinitely. This is an issue with the game code, if so. If, however, the fight continues only until one side or the other is routed... I see no difficulty with this strategy.

Also, those who are against this strategy (especially the people who run the game and set house rules)... what happens if the caster breaks? Say I have a Caelian High Seraph who casts Wrathful Skies, and he is intended to stay in the battle the requisite amount of time. But the opponent causes him to break and run (flying) before that time. What happens in that situation from a game administration PoV? To throw it even more into a concern, what happens if someone deliberately puts this combo on a commander who has the Battle Fright affliction, thus making it more likely for said commander to flee?

As far as the rest are concerned... hacking files: bad! Abusing Bogus commands... bogus! Burying your opponent underneath a pile of useless items... pretty damn bad.

[Tuidjy]

> I'd thank him for the supply of slave collars, put it on indy commanders and send them against his mage-backed armies...

I know that you're a good player, so you shoudl be aware that:

1. On the turn it happens you will forge at best one item, possibly none.
2. The gems you paid will be lost.
3. Most players do not have 50 indy commanders standing around (75+gold per turn)
4. Slave collars can't be picked up post-battle, so all you'll do is give xpt.

If you want to thank people for that, you probably thank people for driving
over your foot.

[chrispedersen]

I'd like to hear more about what is meant by quickmoving slow troops. I consider that abusive..

why not have a standard.. like velusions or llama's. Some games will be open.. some will not - if everyone knows in advance no harm no foul.

But I'd be more interested in games without exploits. Newbies have enough problems learning the game as intended without having to learn the bugs as well.

[Tuidjy]

Quickmoving slow troops, sallying into a neighborhood province, reinforcing
through a besieging army, etc.. are ways of abusing unsufficient error checking
on the client, when the composition of a moving commander's army changes.

You send a commander somewhere where he can legally go. Then some sequences of
adding troops and changing his orders will result in impossible commands being
executed without a snag.

It gets much, much worse if instead of juggling troops you just edit the orders
in the .2h file. As far as I am concerned, morally, there is absolutely no
difference in the two approaches... After all, if the developers did not want
us to hack the .2h file, they would have kept the order validation on the server,
efficiency be damned. Right? Right?

[Velusion]

This really shouldn't be a big deal.

If you are concerned about these exploits/features only play in games that have rules against them (like I do). I would say more than half of the hosted games implement a ban on the most notorious of these exploits.

The twiceborn, Sickle and VotD exploits/features are probably here to stay as most of the hosts don't consider them exploits. They might be slightly unbalanced but they should hardly have a huge impact on the game.

[lch]

Tuidjy said:
> I'd thank him for the supply of slave collars, put it on indy commanders and send them against his mage-backed armies...

I know that you're a good player, so you shoudl be aware that:

No, I was joking. The slave collar thing is a purely theoretical construct. I doubt it has ever been encountered in any game, or ever will be for that matter.

[vfb]

Could someone please explain what is meant by "sallying in to a neighborhood province"?

Is that when you are under siege, and you give a sneaking commander non-sneaky troops so he attacks a neighboring province in one move from a besieged castle?

[Tuidjy]

You are under siege. The enemy army thinks it has you surrounded. Your army
exits the castle, bypasses the besiegers and attacks a neighboring province.
This trick worked when I first started playing Dominions III, let me check
whether it still does.

-----

Yup. still works.

[Tuidjy]

Ich, the slave collar was used back in Dominions II. Actually, it was done with
some other item... It was just remembered as the "slave collar trick" because
some people think that a slave collar is the best item to use.

I disagree. Depending on your objective, it may be better to use a worthless
item that you can remove, i.e. store on your commanders until you need to flood
the enemy's lab. Otherwise, you compromise your own forging one turn before.